Around the Blogosphere...

Most Mesmerizing:
This, done with music, clay, and a potter’s wheel

Most Relatable: 
The Oatmeal with “The Weather Right Now”

Best Insight:
Heather Caliri at She Loves with “Brief Moments When I Did Not Hate the Bible”

“Over and over, I denigrated, discounted and explained away the ways that I did enjoy Scripture. I kept ignoring the approaches I liked in favor of the ones I thought ‘counted.’ That’s when I realized what my real attitude towards the Bible was: If I enjoyed it, if it was easy, or fun, or made my heart sing, it didn’t really count. And its corollary: I believed God wanted the Bible to be unpleasant.”

Best Story: 
Katherine Willis Pershey at Deeper Story with “Footsteps in the Student Center”

“All the pepperoni pizza and praise choruses in the world couldn’t have given me what that low-budget Bible study did.”
 

Best Feature:  
Jessica Testa at Buzzfeed with “Two years after Kony 2012, has Invisible Children grown up?”

“By mid-2012, Invisible Children had nearly $26.5 million in revenue and $17 million in net assets. By mid-2013, the organization had $4.9 million in revenue (their lowest since 2005) and less than $6.6 million in assets. Sixty-five employees in the San Diego office became 29. Two floors of a building became one. About 130 staffers in Africa — 95% of them from the region — became 108. And yet, KONY 2012 was objectively the organization’s most successful campaign ever, both in its mission — making Kony famous, even if on the other end of punch lines — and in policy.” 

Best Question: 
Kathryn Knight at Mail Online with “Why do babies laugh?”
 

Best Perspective: 
Sarah Bessey with “In which I don’t mind if my tinies see me on the computer”

“…We have decided it is GOOD for the tinies to see me loving my job, loving my work, being good at something, and actually doing it. To let them see me being faithful to my calling, let them see their dad empowering me to do it with his enthusiastic blessing, let them see it as part of our family’s gift to the world. This is what we do in this family: we support each other in our work and in our callings and even in the things we just plain love to do."
 

Best Conversation-Starter:
John Shore with “To secretly gay affirming pastors of conservative churches”

“All you have to do is ask your congregation if they’d like to have a conversation about homosexuality and the Bible. If none of them do—if they refuse to even talk about it—then shrug, say ‘Oh. Well, never mind,’ and then quietly start searching for another church….But I’ll bet that doesn’t happen. I’ll bet that people will want to engage in that conversation. As long as you’re not pushing them one way or another, they’ll feel safe.”
 

Best Sermon (shared by Marlena Graves):
Henri Nouwen with “The Life of the Beloved” (from 2011)
 

Best Tribute: 
Shauna Niequist with “She’s not a magachurch. She’s my sister.” 

“You learn all sorts of things growing up the way I did. And one of them is this: the labels never suffice. The articles and blogs and books and outside opinions never will capture the real thing. They’ll reduce it to policy, numbers, data. They fail to capture what a church actually is: real live actual humans, showing up day after day, year after year, building something durable and lovely over time, together, with prayer and forgiveness and love.”
 

Best Response: 
Brandon Wallace at The Gay Christian with "Fred Phelps: Let's picket his funeral...with love"

Most Practical:
Brandon Gaide at The Presbyterian Outlook with “The future of the church: Reflections on the hopes of young Presbyterian leaders”
 

“As a way of thinking about creating change, an image was offered in which the church institution was described as a slab of concrete.  Bringing a sledgehammer to a slab of concrete certainly breaks up the slab, but does not win many friends.  However, few complain if a tree grows beneath the slab and eventually pushes through.  Both produce the same result but use very different means.  Efforts to reform the church should come from effective, fruitful ministry rather than aggressive insistence.  Changing established institutions needs at least the appearance of growing organically.  This is a critiquing-by-creating approach.”
 

Most Powerful: 
Hope E. Ferguson at Her.Meneutics with “Our Brother’s Keepers: A Brokenhearted Black Woman Speaks Out”

“Every black mother lives in fear of deadly trouble befalling her young sons, whether she lives in the New York City governor's mansion or the Brooklyn projects. The other day on Facebook, I saw my brother-in-law counsel his 24-year-old son, who had overheard a white man reviling blacks and Mexicans in a bar, to ignore such talk for his own safety. My sister had the requisite talk with her three young sons about being polite and respectful to police officers when they are pulled over for traffic stops.”

Most Thoughtful:
Richard Beck with “Kenosis as Pouring Out and Vomiting”

“The point here is that the cross is great when preached at the abusers. If you're an abuser you need to go to the cross to stand with your victims. That is the prophetic power of the cross in a violent world full of oppression. But what is the message of the cross for the one being abused? Carry your cross of abuse? Passively and quietly endure your abuse to be like Jesus?” 
 

Most Eye-Opening:
Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra at Christianity Today with “When Sexual Abuse Comes to Light”

“India Baker, who endured emotional and physical abuse at Ivory Coast Academy in the 1990s, said, ‘They told us, 'Don't tell your parents anything bad, because if you do, you're keeping them from doing what they're supposed to do on the mission field. You're keeping them from doing God's work.' I wanted to be the good Christian girl. I wanted God to love me.’"
 

Most Fun: 
American Jesus Madness 2014!!!
 

In book news…

My friend Elizabeth Esther’s book, Girl at the End of the World, releases this week. Fair warning: this book will totally suck you in. Such a quick, yet powerful, read. Here’s what I say on the back cover:

“What a story! Girl at the End of the World is witty, insightful, courageous, and compelling, the sort of book you plan to read in a week but finish in a day. Elizabeth Esther is a master storyteller who describes her journey out of fundamentalism with a powerful mix of tenderness and guts. With this debut, Esther sets herself apart as a remarkable writer and remarkable woman. This book is a gift, and I cannot commend it enough.” - Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Evolving in Monkey Town 

Peter Enns gives us a preview of his upcoming book, The Bible Tells Me So: 

“So here’s my not so radical thought: What if the Bible is just fine the way it is? What if it doesn’t need to be protected from itself? What if it doesn’t need to be bathed and perfumed before going out in public? And what if God is actually fine with the Bible just as it is? Not the well-behaved version we create, but the messy, troubling, weird, and ancient Bible that we actually have. Maybe this Bible has something to show us about our own sacred journey of faith, and that God wants us to wander off the beach blanket to discover what that is. A well-behaved Bible isn’t a sure foundation of faith, but a barrier to true faith and deep trust in God. The Bible, just as it is, isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s an invitation to a deeper faith and actually models that faith for us.”

On my last trip, I finished reading Khaled Hosseini’s latest book, And The Mountains Echoed, and I think it’s his best yet. So, so, soooooo good. I highly recommend it. 

And I’m currently readingDeath Before the Fall by Ronald E. Osborn and it’s fascinating. 

On the blog…

Most Popular Post:
Patriarchy and Abusive Churches

Most Popular Comment:
In response to the post above, Ann wrote: 

“As a practical matter the first and only valid step when an allegation of any type of abuse has been made is to contact the police. I am a licensed social worker who has consulted on a number of these cases in churches. Without exception, the all-male boards always take some type of "elder meeting" deacon meeting" "pastor meeting" "counseling meeting" as their first step, which is where everything goes awry and decisions to conceal alleged crimes are made. (I am using the word alleged as a legal term, not to devalue the stories of survivors) You don't need any type of meeting when an allegation is made. Would you call an "elder meeting" if a building was on fire or someone witnessed a murder? No, you'd dial 911, which is exactly what these men fail to do and why they can be prosecuted in many states as mandated reporters."

Such an important point on an important issue. 

This Week’s Travels…

This week I’m headed to Harrisonburg, Virginia where I’ll be speaking at Eastern Mennonite University. You can catch me on Wednesday,  March 19 during a 10 a.m. university chapel service and also at 8 p.m. in Lehman Auditorium. Both events are free and open to the public. Learn more here. 

***

So what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog? 

As I’m putting the finishing touches on my next book (read: frantically writing the second half), I’ve realized I would like to include a few more stories about other people’s experiences with church. 

The book, tentatively titled Sunday Morning, is ultimately a memoir—a series of essays about loving, leaving, and finding the church, loosely arranged around the seven sacraments. I’m thrilled with how it’s turning out, and think it’s some of my best writing so far. But as with Evolving in Monkey Town and A Year of Biblical Womanhood, it’s important for me to not only share my own story, but also the stories of friends, family, and readers, in an effort to broaden the scope of the project and introduce new perspectives. I’ve already included several people’s stories in the book, but I’d like to include just a few more. 

So I’m hunting for church stories. I’m looking for the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the bizarre, and the redemptive. I’d love to hear from both pastors and laypeople, the churched and the un-churched. A few questions that especially interest me: 

Why did you leave your church? 

How did you find your church? When did you know it was where you belonged?  

What did your journey look like?:  Atheist to Catholic? Anglican to Pentecostal? Baptist to Orthodox? (I love hearing about unusual church journeys) 

Tell me a story that encapsulates everything that is beautiful about your church. 

Tell me a story the encapsulates everything that frustrates you about church. 

[For pastors]: What makes you feel most removed from your congregation? What do you feel you have to keep from them? 

Think 400-800 words, about the size of a normal blog post. (Not my normal, which is 1500 words, but normal people’s normal.)  Specifics are key. Broad generalities won’t help me much. Since the book draws from the imagery of the seven sacraments—baptism, confession, communion, holy orders, marriage, healing, and confirmation—stories that center around those experiences are much more likely to strike a chord with where I’m at creatively with this project. 

If you’re interested in contributing your story, you can send it to Katie@Rachelheldevans.com or leave it in the comment section. Please include your first name and hometown. Katie is my assistant and she will keep track of all the submissions and put them in a single folder in my inbox. Though I will read them all, I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to respond to them all.  Please send submissions by April 1, 2014.

Submissions may be used in one of two ways: 

1)    Inclusion in the book. I’ll be sure to contact you if I want to include your story in the book. If I do, I will likely paraphrase your story in my own words and include several quotes from your submission, so the piece will have a sort of journalistic feel. (I’ll let you read your section before it’s published, but I will retain the rights to the final product, as it appears in the book.) If you leave a short comment—three to five sentences—I may use your quote in a series of other quotes around a single topic. (For example: “I asked my readers why they left their churches, and this is what some of them said…”) In all cases, I will only use first names. 

2)    Guest post entry. You will remember that a few years back we hosted a series of guest posts here on the blog called “Church Stories” (you can find most them under the “church” category). In the lead up to the release of Sunday Morning, I’d love to bring that series back with some new submissions. So if you’re interested in contributing to that, please indicate that in your email or comment and write with my audience in mind. (If I use your submission only for a guest post, you will retain full rights to the final product.) 

Hope all that makes sense. Let me know if you have questions.

One thing I love about blogging is that it has made the writing process so collaborative. I think about this little online community through every stage of the writing and publishing process, and I am so grateful for all the ways in which you have influenced how I think about the church. You’ve had a greater impact on me than you can know, and it’s a privilege to be on this journey with you. 

Thank you! 

Rach

Best Chart:
Bird and Moon with “If you find a baby songbird out of the nest” 

Best Sermon: 
Nadia Bolz-Weber with “Sermon on Earthly Things, Wombs, and the Resurrection of the Dead” 
 

“I understand Nicodemis’s desire for this all to make sense. I do. But instead of a religion revealed through philosophical constructs – easily reasoned out and understood, instead we get a God inconveniently revealed in people, and food and wine and water and bodies and pies and oil and beer. When God chose to come and take on human flesh and walk the earth and break bread with friends it was as though God was baptizing the material.  As though to say ‘stop looking for me in the heavens when you aren’t even close to understanding the majesty of a loaf of bread,’ or as Jesus puts it, if you can’t understand earthly things you’ll never understand heavenly things.” 

Best Reflection:
Maria Konnikova at The New York Times with “Don’t Quote Me On This”

“Emerson didn’t hate quotation, not really. What he hated was our impulse to shortcut actual thought. The Internet didn’t create that impulse, but it has made it far more tempting and easier to satisfy.” 
 

Best Imagery: 
John Blase with “Just a Hunch”

“We live haunted by the remains
of a paradise half-seen in dreams,
half-heard in birdsong, half-felt
in the aftermath of love’s making.”

Best Reminder: 
Kenneth Tanner with “How We Know God” 

“We know what God looks like; God looks like Jesus. We know what God sounds like; God sounds like Jesus. We know how God acts; God acts like Jesus.”
 

Best Analysis: 
Tim Krueger at Christians for Biblical Equality with“Reframing Biblical Masculinity” 

“Several hallmarks of “biblical manhood” look suspiciously like modern, Western, middle-to-upper class rites of passage: employment outside the home, financial independence, marriage, and fatherhood, for instance. Jesus, on the other hand, never married or had children. He abandoned his family business in favor of ministry, becoming financially dependent on others—even women. He could be tough, but he also wept in public. Day after day, he soiled his reputation as a man of God by hanging around the wrong people. In short, Jesus fails spectacularly to live up to the ideals of “biblical manhood.” This, to me, suggests that we might be off track.” 
 

Best Meditation: 
Adam McHugh with "Praying with the Waves" 

"The tide waxes. Inhale. Breathe in the love God.
The tide wanes. Exhale. Release the hurt. 
Wax. Breathe in the Presence.
Wane. Breathe out the regret.
Crash. Inhale his tenderness.
Flee. Exhale the heartbreak and grief.
Approach. Take in the fresh air of grace and new creation.
Depart. Surrender the black cloud of sin and guilt." 

Funniest: 
“5 Reasons Your Partner Doesn’t Actually Want to Go to the Farmer’s Market With You” 

“#2 Because dealing with the crowds and bad parking is not worth a tomato, heirloom or otherwise: I hate big, outdoor, weekend-long concerts. The crowds, parking lines and overpriced water aren't worth it; I'd rather listen to my favorite bands in the comfort of my living room. Not as vibrant or exciting, sure, but a lot less hellish. This is pretty much how your partner feels about tomatoes, corn and whatever else you are waxing rhapsodic about while you both stand uncomfortably sweating under the beating sun, waiting for the vendor to finish up his long, slow conversation with the woman in front of you. No vegetable is worth it, no matter how fresh.”
 

Wisest: 
Brian McLaren with “Do Not Fix Others As You Would Not Want to Be Fixed” 

“A lot of communication SNAFU’s can be avoided if we commit to this simple maxim: do not fix others as you would not want to be fixed.”

Bravest: 
Osheta Moore with “Speaking Fear, Praying Shalom”

“This Mama is still afraid. I’m afraid that my sweet boy in a hoodie could be mistaken for a threatening hoodlum and that a fear-propelled bullet could be his tragic end. This Mama is still afraid, so I will try to stand my ground and pray shalom when I’m tempted to speak fear.”

Truest: 
D.L. Mayfield with “Translators” 

“But inside there are dreams of large trees, big enough to create safe havens for the birds of the air. I am writing, all day every day, in my head. The disasters, the miracles. The despair, the joy. The abuses, the sadness, the mental illness, the addictions, the disabilities; the perseverance, the community, the colors, the embraces. The erasers taped on to the end of a pencil. A box of free bananas in the hallway. The snow slowly melting to reveal a graveyard of vodka bottles, gray and blue and brown. The youth group roaming outside of my window, hungry and scared for that mysterious, inscrutable kingdom to come. I don’t even know it until I write it all down: I love them. I love everything about my life, even as it pulls me down, forces me to see inside myself in ways I never wished for.”

Craziest: 
This Wheel-of-Fortune Moment

Most Fascinating (nominated by Dan Evans): 
Frontline with “The Like Generation”
 

Most Relatable: 
Rob Bell with “What is the Bible, Part 53: A Shout Out to the Lonely” 

“This post is for all of you are are alive in ways you’ve never been before, learning and growing and making connections and seeing things you haven’t seen before but when you’ve shared this new faith and understanding with others you’ve been dismayed to discover that not everybody is so thrilled…” 

[Rob’s whole series on the Bible has been fantastic. If you want to read the whole thing, start here.]

Most Challenging: 
Christena Cleveland with“Urban Church Plantations” 

“A few years ago, a large, multi-campus, predominantly white church on the West Coast decided to expand their ministry into a low-income, predominantly black neighborhood. On the first Sunday of the new urban campus, the white male pastor who had zero urban ministry experience, brashly declared to the mostly black audience, “This ain’t your grandmomma’s church.” Little did he know that grandmomma’s church has been and will continue to be the cornerstone of the community. If it weren’t for grandmomma’s church this community would have completely fallen apart in the face of ongoing racism and societal oppression.” 

Most Thoughtful: 
Rob McCoy with “Six Reasons I Share Communion with Kids”

“One of my favorite things to say during the course of any service is, “This is not my table.  This is not a Methodist table.  This is Christ’s table, and all are welcome.  Come, for all is ready.”  If it is Christ’s table, who am I to guess his guest list?  If Christ wants to meet someone at his table, that’s his call, not mine.  Jesus told a story about inviting guests to a banquet, and one of the most important lessons of that story is that we don’t make the guest list.”
 

Most Eye-Opening: 
Ryan Herring with “From the Penthouse of Privilege” 

“Too often are poor and oppressed people (especially people of color) regarded as threats here in America, while poor and oppressed people in other countries are viewed as victims. This type of perspective is dehumanizing to people here and to people abroad. To overlook the problems here and to focus on issues elsewhere sends the message that poor and oppressed American's problems are either insignificant, unimportant, or non urgent and at the same time it leads to the objectification of the ‘exotic other.’”

Most Encouraging:
Suzanne Burden with “When I Opposed Women in Ministry” 

“She leaned in and said simply: ‘Jesus has already set women free.’ I’ll never forget it. Her timely words unlocked a doorway that had been bolted to me.”
 

Most Powerful: 
Debbie Blue at TIME with“God’s Feminine Side is Plain to See”
 

“The writers of the Bible are well aware of the insufficiency of the words available to them to speak of the divine him/her/it, because they reach so wildly. God is a lily, a rose, dew, wind and fire. God is a mother bear and a lion. On the other hand God is not a lion, but a lamb. God is not in the fire or the wind, but in the still small voice. God is in the images of birthing and bird–these are especially fruitful.”
 

Most Instructive: 
Gene Luen Yang with “Parental Expectations, Practical Majors, and Advice for Making Art”
 

“These days when aspiring cartoonists ask me for advice, I tell them to find a day job that they enjoy, one with flexible hours, one that will leave them with enough energy to do their own projects on the side. For most of us it takes years, even decades, for our art to begin making money. Art is a long haul, and you need to eat…Recently I realized, much to my chagrin, that I’m basically giving an Americanized version of my father’s talk.” 

Most Convicting: 
John Russell Stranger with "Fred Phelps and Our Offensive Gospel" 

"But Jesus—and our encounters with those we can’t stand—remind us that our power is limited. Our power to love. Our power to show compassion. Our power to live graciously. We do not have the power to grant nor withhold the living water of eternal life that Jesus offers the Samaritan woman. The living water of Christ respects none of our human distinctions of identity. The living water is grace more powerful than any of our refusals.”

Most Interesting: 
NPR with "What It Means to Be Catholic in 2014"

Most Relevant to Recent Conversations: 
Alisa Harris at The Daily Beast with “Survivor Bloggers Join Forces to Reveal Christian Fundamentalist Abuses” 

“Julie Ingersoll, a professor at the University of North Florida who studies evangelical communities, said mental isolation is key to abuse, and websites telling the stories of abuse survivors “completely undermine the power of abusers to convince their victims that it's their fault and that they're all alone. Collectively, the stories have power. It is often challenging to fully report on stories of sexual harassment or sexism in evangelical communities because records are sealed and because individual allegations are dismissed by people in power, Ingersoll says. But, she notes, if dozens of women tell the same story, the veracity is difficult to deny: 'If you have 100 stories that are really similar, the likelihood that they're all made up is really low.'”
 

Most Likely to Spark the Imagination:  
Kathy Escobar with “The Kingdom of God is like…”

“The challenge to us was to consider a real-life story of what the kingdom of God is like, a moment where we tasted it, felt it, touched it, experienced it. A moment where on the outside it might have looked like not-that-much, just ordinary, but underneath there was this magical kingdom-y thing happening. A moment where our eyes were opened to the reality of God in the here & now. A moment where heaven broke through. A moment that didn’t make sense but somehow did. A moment, no matter how big or small or seemingly spiritual or unspiritual or complicated or simple, we got a glimpse of God in a special way.”
 

So, what caught your eye online this week? What's happening on  your blog? 

As a book addict, I’m always on the lookout for good sales, so I thought I’d let you know that TODAY ONLY, (March 24), Amazon is selling the Kindle version of A Year of Biblical Womanhood for just $2.99. 

While you’re there, consider adding Sarah Bessey’s excellent book, Jesus Feminist, to your cart as it’s on sale for just $1.99 on Kindle and Nook.

…That’s a whole lot of Jesus-feministy valor for five bucks.

(Note: I realize these sales only apply the U.S. I wish I could change that, but we authors have very little influence over when and where our books are discounted.) 

In other book news, Zondervan is *re-releasing* Evolving in Monkey Town as Faith Unraveled on April 8. The biggest changes are a new cover and new title. Most of the content is the same. This is my first book, and it explains how I went from winning the "Best Christian Attitude Award" at school every year to questioning the existence of God…all in the context of the Bible Belt. You can pre-order Faith Unraveled on Kindle and Nook for just $3.99 right now, which is a great deal. I suspect the price will go up upon release. 

Some other good books on sale at Amazon and Barnes & Noble right now include Still by Lauren Winner ($2.99) and An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor ($3.99). 

So basically, if you’ve been eager to fill up your e-reader with women’s voices, you can do that for cheap this week! 

Finally, as I mentioned last week, I’m still in the writing process for the next book, my third book, which is about church and tentatively titled Sunday Morning. That one is not available yet...cause a good part of it is STILL IN MY HEAD! Yikes.  I’ll of course keep you update when we have a release date for that. 

Happy reading!

UPDATE: So it may have been a mistake to post this when feelings were still so raw. I'm concerned that the article has failed to generate healthy dialog - and I take full responsibility for that - so I'm going to close the comment thread at 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday, March 25.  I'm thrilled that so many people have decided to sponsor children or make a donation through World Vision, so I'll definitely leave the post up. Perhaps we can revisit the conversation in a few days or weeks when we've had some time to reflect. Thanks! 

*** 

So here's what happened...

On Monday afternoon, Richard Stearns, president of the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, announced that his organization would not be taking a position on the divisive issue of same-sex marriage. The charity would, however, permit the employment of gay Christians in legal same-sex marriages. 

Stearns told Christianity Today: 

"It's easy to read a lot more into this decision than is really there. This is not an endorsement of same-sex marriage. We have decided we are not going to get into that debate. Nor is this a rejection of traditional marriage, which we affirm and support….We're not caving to some kind of pressure. We're not on some slippery slope. There is no lawsuit threatening us. There is no employee group lobbying us. This is not us compromising. It is us deferring to the authority of churches and denominations on theological issues. We're an operational arm of the global church, we're not a theological arm of the church.”

Across the Web, many evangelicals responded by declaring their intentions to pull their financial support from World Vision over the matter.  Denny Burk of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary tweeted “Farewell, World Vision.”   Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition wrote a blog post placing all the blame for pulled child sponsorships on gay and lesbian people and their supporters, saying he “grieves for the children” who will lose access to basic necessities over the issue, before including single parents and divorcees among those who are destroying the lives of children around the world.  He posted a picture of a crying black child at the top of his post for effect, reinforcing his message that it’s the fault of “those sinners over there” that evangelicals have been forced to deprive that hungry child of food. 

Let me repeat that sequence of events: 

1) World Vision announces it will not take a position on debates around gay marriage, but will employ people in same-sex marriages in its U.S. offices. 

2) In protest, some evangelicals threaten to halt their current funding for food, water, clothing, and shelter to children and communities sponsored by World Vision. 

3) Evangelical spokespeople say they “weep for the children” who will suffer as a result of pulled sponsorships, and blame gay and lesbian people (and divorcees and single parents) for the actions of evangelicals. 

It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. 

And it puts into stark, unsettling relief just how out-of-control the evangelical obsession with homosexuality has become. Organizations don’t get “farewelled” for hiring divorcees. People don’t get kicked out of their churches for struggling with pride or for not wearing head coverings when they pray.  (See “Everyone’s a Biblical Literalist Until You Bring Up Gluttony.”) But when it comes to homosexuality, Trevin Wax and many others have decided “the gospel is at stake.” 

I have to ask: Since when? Since when has the reality that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again ever been threatened by two men committing their lives to one another? Since when have the historic Christian creeds, recognized for centuries as the theological articulation of Orthodoxy, included a word about the issue of gay marriage? Since when have my gay and lesbian friends—many of whom are committed Christians—ever kept me from loving God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and loving my neighbor as myself? Since when has a single interpretation of the biblical passages in question here been deemed the only one faithful Christians can have? 

The gospel is at stake only insofar as we make one’s position on same-sex marriage a part of it. The gospel is threatened, not by gay people getting married, but by Christians saying support or opposition to gay marriage is an essential part of the gospel when it’s not. 

Furthermore, the notion that the way to “punish” World Vision is to withdraw support from its efforts to feed, clothe, heal, comfort, rescue, and shelter “the least of these” is so contrary to the teachings of Jesus—particularly Matthew 25:31-46—it’s hard to know where to start.  

I’m a longtime World Vision supporter and I’ve seen firsthand the effectiveness of its work, particularly child sponsorships. Like my friend Nish, I beg Christians not to drop their sponsorships or monthly giving to World Vision because they don’t like the idea of gay people working for the organization. (If you’re having second thoughts about that, just imagine writing a letter to your sponsored child explaining exactly why you can’t help him or his community anymore.)

I’m always careful not to equate opposition to gay marriage with hate. But the singling out and scapegoating of gay and lesbian people that’s happening here is deeply troubling to me. When Christians declare that they would rather withhold aid from people who need it than serve alongside gay and lesbian people helping to provide that aid, something’s very, very wrong. It might not be hate, but it is a nefarious sort of stigmatizing, and it’s wrong. 

Finally, all this overdramatic “farewelling” over non-essential issues is getting tiresome. It’s shutting the door of the Kingdom in people’s faces. It’s tying up heavy burdens and placing them on people’s backs. It’s straining gnats and swallowing camels. It’s playing the gatekeeper with smug, self-righteous pride when it is God who decides who comes to the table, God who makes the guest list, God who opens the doors the Kingdom.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that in rejecting the poor, the hungry, the marginalized, the outcast, and “the least of these,” these brothers and sisters have essentially “farewelled” Christ Himself. What a lonely world they have created! 

But now, the good news…

The good news is that the Gospel isn’t a coalition to delineate and defend, but an expansive, worldwide movement that knows no political or geographic boundaries. It is a like a tree that is growing toward the sky, with enough branches for all the birds of the air to find a place to nest. It’s like a hidden pearl, like wheat growing among tares, like mustard seeds splitting beneath the soil.  It’s alive and it’s growing and it won’t be stopped.  

The good news is that God makes the guest list to the heavenly banquet—not you , not me, not Denny Burk, not John Piper. 

The good news is that thousands of World Vision staff from around the world will continue their good work today - building wells, providing life-saving vaccinations, caring for Syrian refugees, partnering with communities to develop business and agricultural opportunities, lifting families out of poverty, and  feeding, clothing, and sheltering vulnerable children. 

The good news—and I want those of you who are discouraged to hear this— is that things are changing. As loud as these legalistic voices may seem right now, you will notice that they are often the same voices, over and over again. What I hear every day on the road and in my office is something different. It’s a freedom song, and it’s coming from thousands of pastors, writers, parents, teachers, and Christ-followers from all walks of life from all around the country and world. My desk is cluttered with books arguing for a more compassionate and inclusive way forward. Where I once scoured the internet for articles in support of women’s equality and LGBT equality, they are now plentiful, overwhelming. Letters detailing changed hearts and minds clog up my inbox. Things are changing. Hearts are softening.  People are listening to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and engaging Scripture in fresh, yet faithful, ways. And even when we disagree, there is a  growing desire to drop our weapons, stop waging war, and start washing feet. 

So what do we do now? 

Well, a few things come to mind: 

1)    Let’s remember that we’re talking about real people here—real sponsored children, real World Vision employees, real Christians on both sides of the issue. Let’s pray for Richard Stearns, for the few employees who are caught in the middle of this and who must be experiencing a profound sense of isolation and sadness over how people are responding to their presence, and for the children, families and communities that are currently benefiting from the good work of World Vision. And let’s pray too for our enemies, real or perceived, that we can love them better in the midst of differences. 

2)     Let’s speak up. The singling out, bullying and scapegoating of gay and lesbian people by the Christian community really must stop. It has gotten totally out of hand. Let’s push back on this idea that gay marriage is a “gospel issue” and that we must break fellowship with those with whom we disagree. And let's take responsibility for our giving or lack of giving instead of blaming it on other people. 

And let's talk. Michael Hidalgo offers up some great conversation-starters here. 

3)   If you are so inclined, consider sponsoring a child or making a one-time donation to World Vision, to help compensate for the funding and sponsorship being pulled.  I’d love to see us partner with my friends Kristen Howerton and Nish Weiseth to help care for the children and communities left in a bind because of pulled funding over this issue. World Vision is doing important work right now with Syrian refugees, for example, and it would be a shame to see that work suffer.

If you’re interested in learning more about how sponsorships work, check out my reports from Bolivia: 

Trickle-Up Economics and a Dam Good Story

A Different Kind of Mommy War

The Healing Power of Play

WATCH: “We are the dinosaurs!” “We are the rabbits!”

Confessions of a Sponsorship Skeptic

“Eshet Chayil!” – Six Bolivian Women of Valor

What Happens to My Sponsored Child When He Grows Up?

Fundamentalism erases people. 

I’ve watched as men once alive with ideas and passion surrender their curiosity and intellectual integrity to conform to the ideological boundaries that will let them keep their jobs.  

I’ve seen women literally shrink—a pound at a time, a dream at a time—as they conform their bodies and their spirits to a strict ideal, as they try to make themselves acceptably small. 

I’ve seen the light go out in people’s eyes when they decide it’s safer to embrace a doctrine or a policy that their gut tells them is wrong than it is to challenge those who say it’s right. 

I’ve watched open minds close and tender hearts harden.

 I’ve seen people pretend to believe things they don’t actually believe and do things they don’t actually want to do, all in the name of conformity to God’s will, all in the name of sacrifice and submission. 

Fundamentalism erases people.  It erases their joy, their compassion, their instincts, their curiosity, their passion, their selves.  And then it celebrates this ghosting, this nulling and numbing, as a glorious “dying to the self,” just like Jesus demanded. 

But is this really what Jesus asked? 

Is this really the sort of fasting God demands? 

Or is it to loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, and set the oppressed free, 

to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, 

to have life and have it abundantly,   

to proclaim freedom for prisoners and sight to the blind, 

to cast out fear,  

to find rest, 

to "learn the unforced rhythms of grace”? 

You see, Jesus never asks us to die without promising us resurrection.  Resurrection is the whole point!

The selves we die to are the fearful selves, the sinful selves, the imprisoned selves. The selves we rise to are the free selves, the life-filled selves, the brave selves, the whole selves, the Christ-like selves. 

Ultimately, we are not called to die. We are called to live. 

As Paul told the Romans, “What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection… God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master”(Romans 6:7, 23, The Message). 

And later: “I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!” (2 Corinthians 6:11-13, The Message)

If we are animated by the spirit of Jesus, we have nothing to fear. 

There is no need to shrink. 

No need to pretend. 

No need to check out intellectually or emotionally. 

No need to disengage out of fear. 

No need to conform to anyone’s will but Christ’s. 

God doesn’t want to erase us. God wants to bring us back to life. 

So take this gift of life...

Eat it, drink it, and breathe it in. 

Taste and see that the Lord is good and you are alive. 

And the travel continues! 

On Wednesday, March 26, I’ll be speaking about my year of biblical womanhood at Wingate University near Charlotte, North Carolina at 8:00 p.m. at the George A. Battle Fine Arts Center in the McGee Theater. The event is free and open to the public. Book signing to follow. 

And on Friday, March 28, I’ll be speaking about millennials and the Church at 7 p.m. at South Main Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. What’s especially cool about this event is that starting at 5 p.m. there will be a FOOD TRUCK MEET-UP outside the church that includes Bernie’s Burger Bus, Monster PB&J, Espresso Rescue, Front Porch Desserts and more. There is no charge to attend the event. Book signing to follow. You can learn more here.  

Photo by Matthew Paul Turner

UPDATE: 

My sources are confirming that, after pressure from evangelicals, World Vision has decided to reverse their decision on employing gay and lesbian people. 

I don't know what to say. I really don't.

For those of you who donated, thank you. That money will be put to good use, I assure you. But I am deeply, profoundly sorry that I inadvertently rallied these fundraising efforts in response to a decision that would ultimately be reversed. Though I sincerely hope everyone who sponsored a child or made a donation will continue to support World Vision, I can see how this effort would make you feel betrayed, as though it were launched under false pretense. And I'm so, so sorry for that. I'm as surprised by all this as you are, but I take full responsibility. 

This whole situation has left me feeling frustrated, heartbroken, and lost. I don't think I've ever been more angry at the Church, particularly the evangelical culture in which I was raised and with which I for so long identified. I confess I had not realized the true extent of the disdain evangelicals have for our LGBT people, nor had I expected World Vision to yield to that disdain by reversing its decision under pressure. Honestly, it feels like a betrayal from every side. 

Something has to change. And I'm committed to being a part of that change. But not today. 

Today, I don't know what else to do but grieve with everyone else who feels like a religious refugee today. This sucks, and I'm so, so sorry. 

I hope you take some comfort in the fact that perhaps, as a result of our petty warring, some kids were sponsored today. 

**

No official numbers have been released yet, but my contacts at World Vision report that thousands of children lost their sponsorships yesterday as evangelicals withdrew funds in protest to World Vision’s policy of employing people in same-sex marriages.  

(Note: I’m so thankful to those who responded to this awful situation yesterday by sponsoring kids or making donations to World Vision. Thank you for that. It’s encouraging!) 

We’ve already discussed how this mass defunding reveals a pervasive problem within evangelicalism of singling out and stigmatizing gay and lesbian people, but today I want to address a common refrain I’ve been hearing from people who have chosen to cut off funding to their sponsored children: 

“We’ll just drop our sponsorship with World Vision and move that money to another organization that better reflects our values.” 

I understand the sentiment, but the truth is, redirecting funds to another organization does not change the fact that a community that was depending on that monthly gift from you will no longer receive it, and a child who once looked forward to your letters will no longer receive them. 

Preston Yancey articulated it well yesterday when he said, "As a World Vision sponsor, you gave your word to a child, not to the organization. That’s what is at stake here." 

Simply swapping out sponsored children as one would trade in an old car reveals the fact that that your sponsorship isn’t really about the child and the community your sponsorship helps; it’s about you. It’s about feeling good about the face on the refrigerator, regardless of whose face it is. 

Removing funds from one organization and putting them into another certainly makes a point. But it makes a point at the expense of already disadvantaged men, women, and children who were counting on that funding for basic necessities.  

And I have to ask: Is that really worth it? 

Obviously, we’re all free to choose to support organizations with models and policies we prefer. Dan and I support humanitarian organizations that don’t always align perfectly with our own viewpoints on politics or theology, but we wouldn’t dream of withdrawing our support unless we really believed that support was doing more harm than good…(which may sometimes be the case, but not, I would argue, in this one). 

When I travelled to Bolivia with World Vision in 2011, I learned a lot about how the sponsorship model works.  What I love about World Vision’s community development model is that it represents what you might call trickle-up economics. When World Vision partners with a community, it begins by identifying and tackling the needs of its most vulnerable members, its children, and then works to address the root causes of those problems  in the community. Sponsorship donations are pooled so that one portion goes directly to a child and his or her specific needs and another goes to the needs of the community.  

In Bolivia, I saw how sponsorship money has funded everything from guinea pig farms, to after-school programs, to hearing aids, to irrigation systems, to marriage counseling, to maternal health initiatives,  to alcoholism support groups, to dams. What starts as a mustard seed—addressing the needs of a single vulnerable child— grows into a tree in which the birds of the air can nest. 

No wonder World Vision is widely recognized as one of the most reputable and effective nonprofit organizations in the world! It’s doing Kingdom work in Kingdom ways: from the ground up. 

(For more on this, check out my posts from Bolivia, “Trickle Up Economics and  Dam Good Story” and “Confessions of a Sponsorship Skeptic.”) 

Now, I realize sponsorship models aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and there are certainly pros and cons to that approach to fundraising.  I’m not here to try and sell you on child sponsorship if you’re not already sold. 

But make no mistake.  Deliberately cutting off funding to your sponsored child affects that child and her community. If you didn’t think that money was actually making a difference, then why were you sponsoring to begin with? 

So if you like another organization’s politics more than World Vision’s but still want to sponsor children, fine. Sponsor a child from both.

But please, for the love, don’t leave a child and a community that was depending on you in a bind so you can make a point about gay marriage. It’s just not worth it. 

“Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” – James 2:15

After financial pressure from evangelicals, World Vision has decided to reverse their decision on employing gay and lesbian people. 

I don't know what to say. I really don't.

For those of you who donated, thank you. That money will be put to good use, I assure you. But I am deeply, profoundly sorry that I inadvertently rallied these fundraising efforts in response to the fallout from a decision that would ultimately be reversed. Though I certainly hope everyone who sponsored a child or made a donation will continue to support World Vision, I can see how this effort would make you feel betrayed, as though it were launched under false pretense. And I'm so, so sorry for that. I'm as surprised by all this as you are.

This whole situation has left me feeling frustrated, heartbroken, and lost. I don't think I've ever been more angry at the Church, particularly the evangelical culture in which I was raised and with which I for so long identified. I confess I had not realized the true extent of the disdain and stigmatization many evangelicals have toward LGBT people, nor had I expected World Vision to yield to that disdain and stigmatization by reversing its decision under financial pressure. Honestly, it feels like a betrayal from every side. 

Something has to change. And I'm as committed as ever to being a part of that change.

But not today. 

Today, I don't know what else to do but grieve with everyone else who feels like a religious refugee today. This sucks, and I'm so, so sorry. 

I hope you take some comfort in the fact that perhaps, as a result of our petty warring, some kids were sponsored today. 

*** 

P.S. I want to share this comment from reader Dan: 

"I sponsored a child because of their original decision. His name is also Daniel and he lives in the Dem Rep of the Congo, which co-incidentally, I am planning on traveling to in November (though I have no plans to see him.)

As a gay man, I am once again disappointed by the actions of some evangelical Christians. I have learned not to expect much from conservative Christianity and tend to give conservative Christians a wide berth. I want to reconcile. I am a graduate of Azusa Pacific University and remain a committed, Episcopalian, Christian. But I often feel like Charlie Brown when he tries to kick Lucy's football when engaging evangelical Christians and this is no exception.

However, none of this is the the fault of the child I sponsored. I'm not going to unsponsor because they reversed their decision. It's ultimately about the child's welfare."

No Superlatives today, but I simply had to share this video. Our friend Jeff Chu, author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?, delivered an amazing speech at the Progressive Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago, which you can read more about here. This is a must-watch for anyone in ministry... well, and everyone else too. Enjoy. 

“Where there is no love, put love  -  and you will find love."
– St. John of the Cross

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

-  Jesus, Matthew 11:28-30, The Message 

Twenty minutes after World Vision announced that in response to financial pressure from evangelicals it would reverse its decision to employ Christians in same-sex relationships, I climbed into the giant SUV of a Baptist minister, where bags of Chick-fil-A were waiting to be consumed by a group of hungry college students, and cried. 

I try so hard to be professional when I’m out on the road speaking, but this had been such a blow I was shaking with anger. 

“I’m so sorry,” my host said when I told him what happened. “This was wrong. This was ugly and wrong.” 

(It’s amazing how, in certain moments, a simple acknowledgement of pain can be such a gift of grace.)

“You know what?” I said after a few minutes of quiet. “I’m done. I’m done with this whole conversation. I’m starting a cereal blog. That’s always been my backup plan anyway.” 

“You mean….like breakfast cereal?” 

“Yeah, like breakfast cereal. I’m kind of an expert on it.” 

“Oh…well that sounds fascinating!” 

(Say what you will about Baptists, but they are consistently, sometimes inconceivably, nice.) 

“I know, right? And the only controversy would be between Cinnamon Toast Crunch people and Gold Graham people. Maybe I could work on getting those two sides to talk to each other.” 

“Well, with God all things are possible.” 

“Indeed.”  

Within minutes I was laughing and eating chicken nuggets with a bunch of bright, engaged Christian students (at Wingate University), remembering once again that the Church is bigger and more beautiful than its ugliest moments. 

***

After what happened last week, I hear a lot of people asking, “What now? What do we do after this?”

The response to World Vision revealed some major fault lines in the Church, and many of us who grew up evangelical interpreted all the gleeful “farewelling” from evangelical leaders as our final kick out the door. 

As I talked to the Baptist minister about this, he said, “Seems like you’ve been wanting to leave evangelicalism for a while but can’t quite let go.” 

“Exactly,” I said. “When people at progressive conferences dis on evangelicalism, I’m the first to jump in and defend it. I identify myself as evangelical in interviews with the press because I want people to know that evangelicalism is a broad and diverse movement with a common spirit, but not necessarily uniform theological or political beliefs. And I speak up when a few vocal evangelical leaders say hateful things about LGBT people or encourage bullying or condone misogyny because I feel like I have this investment in the community and it’s important for those invested in the community to speak up when its leaders are hurting our witness to the world...But I’m not sure I can do that anymore. I’m not sure I can defend a label when the label has come to mean something in our culture that isn’t worth defending anymore and when it’s been made abundantly clear that I’m not welcome at the table anyway.”  

“It seems to me,” he responded,  “that for you, evangelicalism is like the ex you broke up with a while ago but still stalk a little bit on Facebook.” 

(I’m telling you, the dude is like a prophet.)

“That’s exactly what it is!” I said. 

“Maybe it’s time to pull the plug,” he said, “for you own health and happiness.” 

“Maybe it is.” 

***

Don’t worry. I’m not starting a cereal blog, nor am I pulling the plug. 

But I’m done fighting for a seat at the evangelical table, done trying to force that culture to change.

For many years, I felt that part of my call as a writer and blogger of faith was to be a different sort of evangelical, to advocate for things like gender equality, respect for LGBT people, and acceptance of science and biblical scholarship within my community.  But I think that perhaps I became more invested in trying to “fix” evangelicalism (to my standards! oh the hubris!) than in growing Kingdom. And as helpful as I know that work has been for so many of you, I think it’s time to take a slightly different approach. 

So rather than wearing out my voice in calling for an end to evangelicalism’s culture wars, I think it’s time to focus on finding and creating church among its many refugees—women called to ministry, our LGBTQ brother and sisters, science-lovers, doubters, dreamers, misfits, abuse survivors, those who refuse to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith or their compassion and their religion, those who have, for whatever reason, been “farewelled.” 

Instead of fighting for a seat at the evangelical table, I want to prepare tables in the wilderness, where everyone is welcome and where we can go on discussing (and debating!) the Bible, science, sexuality, gender, racial reconciliation, justice, church, and faith, but without labels, without wars. 

I want this little online community to be like Kathy Escobar’s beautiful church in Denver, The Refuge, “where everyone is safe but no one is comfortable.” I want it to be a place where we can tell our stories, confess our sins, discuss Scripture, ask questions, disagree with grace, grieve, heal, create, follow Jesus, and rally together to do justice and love mercy—not just with our words, but with our actions. I want it to be a community that partners with people and organizations serving those on the margins. I want it to be a community led by people like Jeff Chu, Ben Moberg, and Christena Cleveland who exhibited more grace and patience last week than I knew was possible.  I want it to feature and celebrate the voices of those speaking prophetically from the margins. I want us to continue to advocate for "the least of these."

I want this community to be a place where the churched and un-churched, Republicans and Democrats, American citizens and people from around the world, can come together to dream big dreams for the future.  I want it to be a place where those who tired and worn out from religion can find rest…not more fighting, not more judgment…just rest and peace for weary souls.  I want us to be a community where we "learn the unforced rhythms of grace" together. 

Of course, each of us will respond to the events of last week differently.  Sarah Bessey wrote two beautiful and instructive posts that I hope you will read after this: 

For the ones leaving 

For the ones who stay

I certainly hope we create a community here where everyone - those leaving evangelicalism, those staying, and those just trying to figure it out - is welcome to the table, so long as it is approached with peace. 

***

Finally, you can take the girl out of evangelicalism, but you can never take evangelicalism out of the girl. And that’s fine by me.

I will forever be grateful for all the beautiful gifts evangelicalism gave me—a high esteem for and knowledge of Scripture, a heart for activism, and a deeply personal experience and expression of faith.  It was, after all, evangelicals who baptized me, evangelicals who taught me to read and pray and cook. It was evangelicals who first called me a Christian, evangelicals who first told me I was beloved by God.  And it was evangelicals (my parents) who let me sob in their arms yesterday, evangelicals who risked their reputations to reach out in peace last week. 

Evangelicalism has been and always will be home. I suspect a part of me will always miss it. 

But there’s something strangely liberating about standing in the middle of this scorched earth terrain with the resolution to stop fighting, the resolution to give up. I am reminded of the one thing all we Christians have in common, whether we’re Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Seventh-Day Adventist, Anabaptist, Quaker, or something in between: We are Resurrection people. 

Our God is in the business of bringing dead things back to life, so if we want in on God’s business, we better prepare to follow God to all the rock-bottom, scorched-earth, dead-on-arrival corners of this world—including those in our own hearts— because that’s where God works, that’s where God gardens.  There’s no ladder to holiness to climb, no self-improvement plan to follow. It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt, and our despair. 

Most days I don’t know which is harder for me to believe: that God reanimated the brain functions of a man three days dead, or that God can bring back to life all the beautiful things we have killed.  Both seem pretty unlikely to me. 

This never-ending winter has felt like one long Easter Saturday. 

But Sunday's coming....I can feel it. 

***

So, how do we recover from the mess of last week? What do we do to grieve, to heal, to build bridges, to open up some tables, and to move on? What does it look like to find and create church among the culture war’s refugees? 

Today I am thrilled to share a guest post from one of my favorite writers, Micha Boyett. Micha (pronounced "MY-cah") is a writer, blogger, and sometimes poet.  She and her husband live in San Francisco with their two boys. A former youth minister, she's passionate about monasticism and ancient Christian spiritual practices and how they inform the contemporary life of faith.  

Micha’s first book, Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer released just yesterday, and let me tell you, it’s fantastic. Endorsed by Ann Voskamp, Mary Karr, Sarah Bessey and Yours Truly, Found opens a door to Benedictine spirituality through which regularly, busy people can enter and taste, see, smell, hear, and feel what it means to live life as prayer. If you’ve been struggling with prayer—particularly as a busy parent—this is the read for you. 

But in the meantime, savor this beautiful reflection on joy: 

When the Joy Runs Out

by Micha Boyett

I gather my two pajama-clad boys in the lamp-lit living room. They climb the couch and lean against me, warm and snuggly. They wrestle for the coveted spot in my lap. The oldest is foggy-headed. The younger one always wakes chipper. He babbles on about Mickey Mouse and “Diny” and their adventures on a train last night. I listen, then tickle the older boy’s back and talk him through his day. Today is library day and he needs to grab his book and stick it in his backpack.

Somehow it’s already 6:50. Ugh. These kids are slow as molasses. This could be a disaster. I kiss their faces and send them to their room to dress themselves. “I’m setting the timer, boys!” I yell down the hall. “If you’re not dressed by 7, you have to eat your breakfast in the car!”

I run downstairs where my husband stands in front of the mirror, already dressed for work, his shirt tucked in, his jaw set in that superman stare he makes when he’s concentrating.

This will be another morning without a shower. A bun-on-top-of-my-head morning.

There’s a rumble overhead. “Boys!” I shout up the stairs. “I hope you’re getting dressed!”

They make it in time for cereal and I spread peanut butter and jelly onto bread, slice apples, pack my computer, finish the permission slip for the Kindergartener’s coming field trip.

We are five minutes late once everyone is buckled tight and the car spins out into the rain. “But 7:35 is pretty good,” I whisper to the dashboard.

*

I’ve had a Sandra McCracken song on repeat in the car these past few days, Oh for grace to be somebody other than this / To be loved with a love that I cannot resist.

I’m sure I sang that line to the skies long before I found Sandra’s words. And now, when she sighs them through the speakers of my car, I nod my head. Yes.

“We want kid music! Mommy!” one of the voices whines behind me. I hold those words a moment longer.

To be loved with a love that I cannot resist.

*

Last month, my pastor preached a sermon on John 2, that story of Jesus’ first miracle. A wedding that runs out of wine. Water remade blood red.

“What Jesus is doing here is replacing the joy,” my pastor said.  The party had failed in its hospitality and that’s embarrassing, of course. But under that story of water turned to wine is something bigger. It’s a story about everything we strive to fill our lives with, everything that fails to make us whole.

“Jesus is saying, ‘I know what you’re looking for and it’s not found here. It’s found in me,’” my pastor said.

Found. There’s that word. I always come home to that word.“In the greatest pain and suffering of our life is when we really understand that the joy actually does run out,” my pastor said. “Look at where you’re frantic and that’s probably the place where you’re trying to find joy.”

Look where you’re frantic.

*

There was a hallway outside the great big sanctuary in my childhood church. It was covered in framed photos of the church members who had gone on to full-time ministry: the missionaries, the pastors. They were the special ones, the important ones. All I ever wanted was to be included among them. All I wanted was a life that mattered.

That’s not why I went into ministry. Not really. I became a youth pastor because I loved Jesus and loved high school students. I had the energy to take a pie in the face, get it sprayed off with a water gun, sing songs at the top of my lungs, and then sit with kids and their heavy questions. Could God really love them? My job was to do all of those things: the pie and the holy conversations, one right after another. I loved it.

But we’re all full of mixed motives, aren’t we? My deepest insecurities found temporary comfort through my job. Underneath my spiritual confidence, I wasn’t sure I could ever really please God. I had too many doubts, too much anxiety. I didn’t pray enough. So I worked harder doing the work that counted most. Please God. Let my life matter.

*

When Jesus is faced with a party full of wedding goers and a room of empty wine goblets, his mother asks him to do something.  

He takes the stone jars used for ritual cleansing, water meant to scrub the people clean enough for God’s holy presence. Those jars are empty. Jesus takes them and fills them with ordinary water. Then he undoes that water’s chemistry. He undoes the elements.  Those jars of water are flooded with rich, aged wine.

You can’t scrub yourself clean with wine.

*

One year into motherhood, I quit ministry. I was exhausted. I had filled my days with the needs of my baby and the needs of my students, and lost prayer somewhere in the in-between. I blamed myself. I never said it out loud, but I knew I was a failure. If I had just worked harder, slept less, pushed through, I could have made it work.

Oh for grace to be somebody other than this.

I left ministry and moved with my husband across the country. And in a new city, with a new job as “stay-at-home-mom,” I wobbled. I was prayerless and sad.

In San Francisco, I wasn’t a minister. I wasn’t impressive to my new church. I wasn’t impressive to the strangers at the park. And I certainly wasn’t impressive to God. I had lost my dreams of being enough. And now, I couldn’t even remember how to pray. My fears and doubts raged.

The joy had run out.

*

Oh for grace, to be measured by more than my means / And to love with a love that gives free without strings.

“Change the song to something fun!” my boys scream. I turn the corner in the rain.

I think how much of my life I spent scrubbing myself with ceremonial water, refilling the jars, begging God to make my life holy enough. And all along, the containers weren’t empty at all. Wine was ready for the taking.

The story of Jesus is always shocking and usually begins in the simple places. I sit in the rain-soaked school-drop-off lane with a line full of other, ordinary people in cars.

God adds water to empty jars, undoes molecules, and the outcome is absurd and beautiful. We are invited to live the narrative of resurrection. God crushed and poured out. The one come from water, brought back as wine.

Here. Right now, in my unimpressive, ordinary morning: This is where Jesus takes my worn out empty self and changes the molecules.  The miracle is happening.

Over and over again, and I cannot resist it.

***

Find Micha on Twitter,Facebook, and at michaboyett.com.

And don't forget to check out her beautiful book, Found. 

So your response to Tuesday’s post was so kind and encouraging. Thank you. It really means the world to know I’m not alone, that many of us are wandering this religious wilderness together, taking it one step at a time.

That said, this has been a painful few weeks, and I think I’ve felt some (self-inflicted) pressure to speak from that pain rather than listen to it. 

So I find myself second-guessing the “leaving evangelicalism” language, not because it’s an inaccurate representation of what I’m experiencing, but because I don’t want anyone to think for a moment that this means walking away from the many, many people who identify as evangelical whom I love and respect very much. I have no interest in breaking fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ, be they Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Mennonite progressive or evangelical. After all, we share the most important “label”— the one God gave us—as beloved children of God. (I’m beginning to think any other label might do more harm than good.)

I guess I just convinced myself that if I let go of the investment I have in the evangelical community, this alienation wouldn’t hurt as much. All the flippant “farewells” and hate mail and parody accounts and challenges to my faith wouldn't sting as much if they were coming from the “outside” rather than the “inside." 

Well you know what?

It still hurts. Nothing’s changed.  And the punch in the gut from last week’s World Vision situation (in which 10,000 children lost their sponsorship as a result of an evangelical protests) continues to leave me, and many others, feeling breathless. 

As much as I wish I didn’t care, I still dream of an evangelicalism where both my friend Jen Hatmaker (who wrote this) and my friend Ben Moberg (who wrote this) are welcome at the same table. One baptism. One communion.  One faith.  One family.

Maybe it’s not worth handing that dream over to the loudest, most divisive voices. Maybe it’s worth fighting for.

...Or maybe it's not. 

Maybe it's time to let go and move on and focus exclusively on being the Kingdom among the culture war's many refugees. 

I don’t know. I really don’t.

So I’m thinking that instead of speaking from this place of pain and confusion, I just need to listen for a while. I plan to take some time off blogging, with the exception of a few announcements and guest posts here and there, so I can pray and yell and listen and reflect and maybe reconsider that cereal blog. (I’m kidding…mostly. I got retweeted by Captain Crunch last week, which kinda rekindled the dream.) 

I think a lot of us are working through some feelings of grief as we find ourselves struggling, perhaps for the first time, with our religious identity. May we learn to sit in this grief with open hearts and minds. May God be close the brokenhearted.

Love to you all,

Rach

“If I’ve learned anything over the past five years, it’s that doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves. It helps us cast off false fundamentals so that we can recover what has been lost or embrace what is new. It is a refining fire, a hot flame that keeps our faith alive and moving and bubbling about, where certainty would only freeze it on the spot.” -   from Faith Unraveled 

When I was a little girl, I vowed to see my first book in print by the age of 10. So when people told me that 27 was too young to write and publish a memoir, I kindly informed them that I was actually running about 17 years late. 

I dressed up as an author for career day in third grade. Had I known the actual "uniform" of the working writer, I would have just worn my pajamas. 

It is both sweet and strange to read through the pages of that first book, so carefully and earnestly written. They tell the story of my childhood faith, my life as a young Christian apologist in Dayton, Tennessee (home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925), and those first few questions about Christianity that slowly unraveled everything I thought I believed.  

Dan made me do this. 

The book, Evolving in Monkey Town, was published by Zondervan in 2010 and became an important avenue through which to connect with other Christians who were struggling with doubts about their faith and wondering where they fit into the church.  What a joy it was to receive letters from readers containing those two powerful words: “Me too.” 

Evolving in Monkey Town didn’t exactly sell off the shelves—(it’s always a fun surprise when someone brings it to a book signing!)—but it gave me the opportunity to keep writing, which is all I’ve ever wanted to do.  

So it brings me great joy to announce today that Evolving in Monkey Town has officially been re-released by Zondervan with a new title and new cover.  Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions hits the shelves today. 

If you know me only through the blog or my second book (A Year of Biblical Womanhood) you will find some surprises in Faith Unraveled, like how I won the Best Christian Attitude Award at my elementary school four years in a row, how I survived the annual Judgment Day House at First Baptist Church in Dayton, how I studied to defend young earth creationism in college, how I travelled to India in search of God, how a woman named Zarmina changed my life. This is a deeply personal book, and it delves into the places, stories, questions, and relationships that most shaped my faith journey. I suspect many of you will find them familiar.

If you’ve already read this one, all that’s changed is the title and cover and a few revisions. But if you’re interested in helping to get the word out, consider sharing a favorite quote on Twitter or Facebook today or leaving an Amazon review. As work continues on Book #3 (due out this fall) and I take a little blogging break, I hope this first book, written with as much love and courage as my 27-year-old self could muster, will do what it was always intended to do: remind you that you’re not alone. 

Order here. 

Or check your local bookstore.

As Lent draws to a close and Holy Week approaches, I wanted to let you know about a cool project I had the pleasure of working on with Michael and Lisa Gungor, Rob Bell, Amena Brown, Aaron Purdy, Mike McHargue and other creative types collectively known as The Liturgists. 

This week, The Liturgists released ‘Garden’—which combines music, prayer, poetry, and spoken word to create an honest and evocative liturgy around Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. For my part—Holy Saturday—I adapted and read a post entitled “Holy Week for Doubters.” (But be sure to listen to each entry. You will love "Friday" and "We Believe"...and well all of it.) 

As I look ahead to what’s next in life, this is just the sort of work I hope to do more often. And I hope you, your family, and perhaps your faith community resonate with  ‘Garden.’ 

You can listen here. 

So I’ll be speaking at Calvin College tonight at 7 p.m. in the Chapel about my Year of Biblical Womanhood. The event—(which is connected with the school, not the Festival of Faith and Writing, which is happening concurrently and which I’m also participating in)—is free and open to the public. 

Already I’ve been so warmly welcomed by the students here and by some gorgeous weather. They’ve announced the event with sidewalk chalk, so I’ve walked over my name like four times today. I love college campuses! 

Would love to connect with you in person, so if you come, be sure to say hello. 

I’m in Seattle this week, speaking at Seattle First Baptist on Saturday and Sunday. As part of the Romney lecture series on Saturday, I’ll be speaking  about millennials and the church as well as spirituality and social media (10 .am. – 12 p.m.). On Sunday, I’ll be speaking at the 11 a.m. worship service.  Both events are free and open to the public. (The lunch event on Saturday has been sold out.) 

You can learn all the details here.

Amidst all the hype and debate surrounding this year’s flood of faith-related films--Noah, God is Not Dead, and Heaven is For Real--a quiet Oscar winner from 2013, recently released to DVD, provides the most compelling story of faith I’ve seen on the big screen in years. 

(Well, technically I saw it on the little screen on Delta Flight 1768 from Seattle to Atlanta, which is pretty much the only way I see any movies these days…but, hey, at least the cookies and pretzels are free.) 

Philomena traces the heart-wrenching journey of a devout Irish woman (played by the incomparable Judi Dench) who sets out to find her long lost son, whom she was forced to give up for adoption as a teenager by nuns who kept her like a prisoner in a convent full of other unwed mothers in the 1950s. 

Her unlikely partner in this venture is a washed-up journalist named Martin Sixsmith (played brilliantly by British comic actor Steve Coogan) who somewhat reluctantly finds himself chronicling this “human interest story.”

The film is based on a true story as detailed in Sixsmith’s book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, and is at once laugh-out-loud funny and excruciatingly sad.  (The downside to watching a great movie on a plane? Crying in front of your seatmate.) 

The dialog is smart and playful, the tone pitch perfect, the acting superb. Dench totally nails her role as the provincial, inexperienced Philomena, who annoys the skeptical Martin with her old-fashioned sensibilities and penchant for lowbrow romance novels.  The dialog between the two alternates between hilarious and profound, and their relationship totally makes the film. (In one scene, Philomena asks Martin if he believes in God, and in response, he delivers a lengthy, anxious soliloquy about the impossibility of answering that question and the arrogance of certainty in the face of the unknown. When he asks Philomena the same question, she simply responds. “Yes.”) 

But neither character is portrayed one-dimensionally. Both are imperfect, sympathetic, complicated, and surprising. 

Unlike God Is Not Dead, where the atheist professor is portrayed as blindly antagonistic toward people of faith, Martin’s frustrations with religion are reasonable and relatable, especially given the circumstances, and I found myself nodding along as he urged Philomena to confront the evil done to her by the Church.  

“I don’t like that word, evil,” responds Philomena.

 “No, evil’s good,” he assures her, “story-wise.”

Yet time and again, Philomena confounds both Martin and the audience with a faith that is at once understated and brave, quiet and profound. In the end, the two come together in a powerful moment in which Martin, though he is justifiably angry and fed up with the abuses of the convent that betrayed Philomena, nevertheless purchases a gift for her from their gift shop, to be presented with love at one of her most vulnerable moments. 

It’s unusual to find a movie in which one relates so powerfully to both the person of unshakable faith and the skeptic. But with Philomena, I did. What I loved most about this movie was the way it so honestly and carefully explored the tension of holding faith in the midst of abuses of that faith.  I can’t think of a movie that does this better. 

While the debates rage on about whether Noah is biblical enough, Heaven is For Real true enough, and God is Not Dead profitable enough, Philomena delivers a quiet, understated, and powerful portrayal of the actual human experience,  where clear-cut lines between good and evil, heroes and villains, right and wrong might be good “story-wise” but don’t reflect the reality most people of faith actually live in. 

It’s a movie I’ll be thinking about for months, maybe years, long after I descended from 31,000 feet. 

With my speaking schedule slowing down and my next book almost finished, I’ll finally be back to regular blogging over the next few weeks, and I can’t wait.  After some reflection and re-prioritizing, I feel like I have a better sense of what I’m called and gifted to do online and with this community. Thank you so much for giving me the space to breathe and think a little more deeply about that. I’m so grateful. 

Around the Web…

Funniest:
The Honest Toddler with “Open Letter to the Child I Hit at the Park” 

“And then I saw you. Blue and white pinstripe overalls. Like a convict. Your ensemble was fittingly poetic. Foreshadowing, brought to you by Carters. You sat, legs splayed in the sandbox holding my shovel.” 

Wisest: 
Heather Kopp with “The Promise of Shared Brokenness” 

“The particular brand of love and loyalty that seemed to flow so easily here [in recovery meetings] wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced, inside or outside of church. But how could this be? How could a bunch of addicts and alcoholics manage to succeed at creating the kind of intimate fellowship so many of my Christian groups had tried to achieve and failed? Many months would pass before I understood that people bond more deeply over shared brokenness than they do over shared beliefs.”

Bravest: 
Emily Maynard with “God Has  a Body” 

“God has a body, they said. God walked on the earth and blew dust out of his nose and laughed with his friends. God took on human flesh so we, human flesh, could be with God. God had to become a body, they said. And I believed it. I saw the pictures, growing up; I saw the pictures of God on flannel graphs and coloring pages and in the Jesus storybooks and on TV. I liked God. God had a body, but it wasn’t a body like mine. It wasn’t a body with breasts that grew, with hips that expanded, with a uterus that bled regularly, with cramps that made him throw up every month. It wasn’t a body that was warned against, and called a stumbling block.” 

Sweetest: 
This new song/video from Jasmine Thompson 
 

Best Analysis:
Jared Keller at Pacific Standard with “No, the Internet is Not Killing Religion in America” 

“The Internet is just another tool, not some aggregated monster-like state that graced the front of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, crushing churches across the English countryside. It doesn’t make you do anything: It amplifies your best and worst traits, all of which are shaped by your childhood, your socioeconomic status, and your education level, among other things.”

Best List: 
Heart & Minds with “9 Books on Sustainable Living, Good Eating, Local Churches, and Living Gently on the Land” 

Best Story: 
Cheryl M. Lawrence with “A Good Death”

“We asked ourselves: What would it mean for a church to lose its life for the sake of the gospel? What would it mean for a whole church to take up a cross and follow our crucified Savior?” 

Best Sermon:
David Henson with “The Hope in Our Wounds” 

“Ours is a faith that embraces wounds. It’s not that it celebrates pain or relishes in it. Nor does our faith ask us to seek out pain or suffering, as if our redemption is tied up with how miserable we can be for Christ. But our faith refuses to gloss over our woundedness with hollow positive thinking. It refuses to ignore that basic tenet of human life. We will hurt.” 

Best Response: 
Lisa Sharon Harper with “Donald Sterling: Façade, Fiction, and Forgiveness” 

“The fictitious narrative is this: People of color are either beasts or burden, only able to survive because of the benevolent charity of the whites who feed them, house them, and give them "things to do." These are the facts, hidden by the façade and the fiction: For every one Magic Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, or Eva Longoria, there are millions of blacks, Latinos, and others who have been barred from adequate housing, equal education, and affordable health care. They have suffered the effects of legislation that lowered the bar of criminality and targeted them to fill privatized prisons. Sterling's alleged comments are only a drop in the bucket. They only revealed the heresy, the connection between the façade, the fiction, and the facts.” 

Best Infographic: 
Nielsen TOPTEN with “Just How Long is a TV Marathon?”

Best Dialog: 
Justin Lee and Ron Belgau at Seattle Pacific University with “Two Views on Christian Sexual Morality” 

Best Conversation-Starter: 
Sharon Hodde Miller with “My Kid is Not My Calling”

“So, let's stop throwing around "calling" when we really mean "life stage" or "career." It's not that calling cannot align with these things, but if we carelessly slap "calling" on any and every circumstance, we risk overlooking the unique purposes written into our beings. Christians' use of the word "calling" might be arbitrary, but God's call is anything but. Not all of us are called to motherhood, but all of us are called to something.”

Best Reflection: 
Brené Brown and Work of the People with “Jesus Wept”

“I thought faith would say, I’ll take away the pain and discomfort, but what it ended up saying was, I’ll sit with you in it.” 

Most Heartbreaking: 
“After Two Weeks, 234 Abducted Nigerian Schoolgirls Are Still Missing”

Most Pastoral: 
Josh Graves at Jesus Creed with “The Place in the Soul for Doubt”

“My point is to simply say that when you, the preacher or bishop or small group leader, find yourself in that moment in which someone bares their doubtful soul, recognize the sacredness of what’s happening in your very midst. You’ve been invited into one of the most important parts of a person’s soul. A place in the soul that is deeper than education, family bonds, 401k trends, and exclusive summer travel plans. You are wading  in the deepest mystery of what gifts a person to choose or not choose the path of faith.” 

Most Helpful: 
Gail Wallace at The Junia Project with “1 Timothy 2:12: Ten Talking Points”

“If we really want people to reconsider their position on this ‘proof text bomb’ let’s figure out how to have this discussion in a more meaningful way.” 

Most Powerful: 
Austin Channing Brown with “The Impossible” 

“I believe in the death of injustice, in the life of hope, grace, mercy, and love. I believe in the impossible. I believe there can be healing where there is violence. I believe reconciliation is possible- hearts can be moved, minds can be changed, politics broken. I believe that justice can roll down like a river and we can all taste its sweetness. I believe in the impossible. I believe we can treat people- all people- with dignity; we can recognize their humanity; recognize the divine within. I believe we can do more. Create more jobs. Build more homes. Turn food deserts into promiseland harvests. Subvert racial and gender hierarchies. Consider others more important than ourselves. Slay preferences that lead to exclusion. Set captives free. Welcome the stranger. I believe in impossible things. I believe in death because I believe in life. I believe in the death of -isms. I believe in the life of love. I believe humanity can change because I believe in the impossible.” 

Most Encouraging: 
Ann Voskamp with “Why Your Soul Needs You To Make Time to be Creative: 7 Keys” 

“Creativity, it’s good theology; it’s what God did in the beginning.”

Most Thoughtful: 
James Hoskins at Christ and Pop Culture with “God is Not Dead and the Angry Professor: That Was Not My Experience” 

“…Not once did my philosophy professors attack my faith or treat me unfairly. In fact, I found all of them to be extremely kind, patient, and generous. Several of them, including the Nietzsche expert, wrote me glowing letters of recommendation for grad school that, I’m certain, included compliments I didn’t fully deserve. I felt respected, even mentored, by them. And all of this despite the fact that they passionately disagreed with my beliefs. That’s not to say they never challenged my faith. They did. But it was for a really good reason: it was their job.”

Most Relatable: 
Benjamin Moberg with “Hymnals and the Way of Faith”

“…Maybe it’s not about fitting back into something. Maybe it’s about being aware of the new shape of my faith. I’ve grown and changed and it’s different now, maybe better. In this season, I can’t hear the electric zest of an era that is still too raw, that left me high and dry and bitter and cold. Maybe I can only be with the old songs. The simple ones. I can lean into the sturdiness of lyrics long-lived.”

Most Enlightening: 
Ebony Adedayo with  “Break Every Chain: The Music I Hear on the Radio”

“…The message that they keep sending is that the Christian experience doesn’t belong to someone who looks like me. It reinforces the sad reality that black artists, preachers, teachers, pastors, etc, will hardly ever be able to use their voice in the ‘mainstream’ Christian arena in the U.S. without being silenced, marginalized or exploited.” 

On my nightstand…

Something Other Than God by Jennifer Fulwiler 

Sermon on the Mount (Story of God Commentary) by Scot McKnight and Tremper Longman III

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog? 
Read any good books lately? 

The myth of redemptive violence—the notion that we can kill our way to peace— is a powerful one, and I'm constantly amazed at how it sneaks into our culture, the Church, and even my own heart. 

We saw it stated rather overtly when Sarah Palin, a Christian, declared to a roaring crowd at the National Rifle Association annual meeting that true leaders “put the fear of God in our enemies,” and that if she were in charge, those enemies would know “that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."   

The myth was perpetuated again last week by President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Al Mohler who, in response to Clayton Lockett’s botched execution in Oklahoma, wrote a post for CNN entitled “Why Christians should support the death penalty.” 

“In a world of violence,” he argues, “the death penalty is understood as a necessary firewall against the spread of further deadly violence.” 

Violence to stop violence to stop violence to stop violence. 

And on and on it goes...

I found it telling that in making his case for the Christian view on capital punishment, Mohler does not once consider the teachings of Jesus Christ. Instead, he supports his position by primarily citing Old Testament law, which he neglects to mention prescribes the death penalty not only for murderers, but also for adulterers and disobedient children. 

And it is ironic that Mohler, who has been a tireless advocate for young earth creationism on the basis that “the straightforward and direct reading of [Genesis] describes seven 24-hour days,” does not seem to think that a straightforward and direct reading of Jesus’ teachings regarding violence is necessary. 

In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus confronted the myth of redemptive violence head-on: 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

And when Jesus was given the opportunity to participate in the execution of an adulterer, he refused, challenging those who had gathered around the woman to drop their stones and walk away. 

Funny how it’s easy to favor a “straightforward reading” of the text until the text says “love your enemies.” 

Since he’s a brother in Christ, I’ll give Mohler the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t quote Jesus because he believes Jesus’ teachings regarding violence are intended to be applied exclusively at the personal level without affecting public policy. (While Old Testament law still applies?) He’s entitled to that opinion, of course, but I do wish he would stop accusing Christians who don’t interpret Genesis 1 as a literal, scientific text as having a “low view of Scripture” when his piece reveals that his own literalism is as selective as the next guy’s. 

(Reality check: We’re all selective about what we interpret and apply literally from Scripture. And most of us are doing our best to honor the meaning of the biblical text while also considering its original context, culture, genre, and language. Disagreements don’t have to reflect a high view vs. a low view. Most simply reflect different views.) 
 
Still, when we have folks declaring that support for torture and the death penalty reflect the Christian position on justice, I think it’s worth asking a seemingly obvious question: To what degree does Jesus inform our Christianity? 

 A recent Barna poll showed that only 10 percent of practicing Christians in America believe Jesus would support the death penalty for criminals. And yet a much higher percentage (42 percent of Christian Baby Boomers and 32 percent of Christian millennials) support the death penalty themselves. 

That’s a pretty significant disconnect. 

And I suspect it exists because we have created a culture in which Christians tend to see Jesus as a sort of static mechanism by which salvation is secured rather than the full embodiment of God’s will for the world whose life and teachings we are called to emulate and follow. 

Basically, we believe that Jesus died to save us from our sins, but we haven’t yet embraced the reality that Jesus also lived to save us from our sins. 

We haven’t embraced the reality that following the ways of Jesus leads to liberation and life more abundant - not only for ourselves but also for the whole world. 

Instead, we tend to think of the Sermon on the Mount and the stories of the gospels as interesting backstory to Jesus’ march to the cross, where the penalty for our sins was paid in full. We flatten out the words of God-In-Flesh—(God eating and drinking and walking and teaching and laughing and crying among us)— and give them equal (or often lesser) value to those of the apostle Paul or Old Testament law. 

But the Bible isn’t flat. The Bible reaches its culmination, indeed its fulfillment, in the person of Jesus Christ.  So it seems like we ought to listen to what he had to say….and what he’s saying still.  

But here’s the rub: 

It’s easy for me to spot Al Mohler’s Sarah Palin’s inconsistent application of Jesus’ teachings, but the minute I turned to the Sermon on Mount to load up with proof texts against them, I was hit by this zinger: 

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell."

That word, ‘raca,’ basically means “idiot,” and when I think of all the times I’ve muttered that word under my breath in response to folks with whom I disagree, it’s a little convicting.

….Okay, a lot convicting. 

(Seriously. Every time I go to the Gospels to mine them for a theological point to use in an argument, I end up walking away saying, "Dang it, Jesus! WHY!?!?") 

The truth is, Jesus doesn’t always inform my Christianity either. In fact, sometimes I’m not sure I want to follow Jesus. I'm not sure it’s possible to be a healthy, well-adjusted person and go around loving your enemies and giving without expecting anything in return and turning the other cheek. For all my well-intentioned advocacy against the death penalty, I'm not certain I'd oppose it if the person on death row had killed my mother or my sister or my husband. 

But if Jesus is really God-in-flesh, if he really shows us the way to live, then I need the Church to help me figure out what it looks like to do that faithfully. I need the Church to help me wrestle with these teachings, not ignore them. 

And I think that begins by putting Jesus at the center, not the periphery, of what it means to be a Christian. 

(See also, "Everyone's a biblical literalist until you bring up gluttony." And check out Zack Hunt's post on this as well. And also Jonathan Merritt at The Atlantic with "Would Jesus Support the Death Penalty?")